Woodwind instruments have been known for a long time. The modern instruments such as concert flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, saxophones and other members of these instrument families feature a sound tube provided with a certain number of holes. The holes are covered by the finger of the player or by pads that are operated directly or indirectly by the fingers of the player. The number of holes of modern instruments exceeds the number of fingers in order to enable chromatic playing as well as to improve intonation, facilitate trills, etc. With some instruments, not all fingers are available for the operation of tone holes or keys as they are used to hold the instrument. Accordingly a key mechanism is required that allows for closing all the tone holes with the fingers available for operating the keys.
Today, widely established key mechanisms are available such as the Boehm system of concert flutes, the systéme conservatoire of oboes, the Boehm and Oehler systems of clarinets, the Heckel and Buffet systems of bassoons as well as the modern saxophone key work. However, these mechanisms have their drawbacks: First of all, with all of these mechanisms fingers have to operate several keys. As an example, when playing a contemporary bass clarinet extending to low C, the right and left little finger are responsible for operating six keys each. Even more keys are operated by the left thumb of a bassoonist. Furthermore, so-called “forked” fingerings, i. e. fingerings where a certain tone hole is open and at least one adjacent lower tone hole is closed, are required for some of the notes, even in the fundamental registers of the instruments. They impede fluid playing of the instrument and are counter-intuitive. All this contributes to some keys (especially those having a large number of accidentals) being more difficult to play than others. Learning to play fluidly in all keys is therefore cumbersome. Furthermore, modern music that is not bound to traditional tonality is even more difficult to play on today's instruments.
It has been approached to modify the established instruments and their key mechanisms to address the aforementioned problems.
As an example, U.S. Pat. No. 7,851,685 B2 (E. Reissner) relates to an improvement of the fingering mechanism for woodwind instruments, in particular for oboes. The document is directed to avoid the problems that occur in connection with the forked fingerings of the known fingering systems. It proposes to have a fingering mechanism that comprises a first key that actuates both a first hole corresponding to the first key, and another remote tone hole. By closing the first key corresponding to the first tone hole, the first tone hole is closed only if a second tone hole that is closer to the mouthpiece is closed as well. In order to allow this, the first tone hole is modified in such a way that it is not directly actuated by the first key but via an intermediary mechanism. This may be achieved by placing the first tone hole not directly below the first key but in a position that is rotated with respect to the first key along the circumference of the tube of the instrument. A second mechanism prevents the first tone hole from being closed if the second tone hole is open. With respect to the Systeme Conservatoire of the oboe, the disclosure allows for avoiding the forked fingerings at Bb4 and C5. The measure is declared to be applicable not only to oboes but also to concert flutes, clarinets, oboe d'amore, English horn, bassoons and saxophones.
The measure proposed by the Reissner patent alleviates a specific problem of a specific mechanism. It does not aim at solving the general problems stated above.
GB 2 040 097 B2 (A. D. Freed) relates to improvements to the support, fingering and mechanism of instruments of the flute family. Inter alia it seeks to provide improved support allowing a natural position of head and arms. For that purpose, the tube of the instrument is arranged as a loop, wherein the tone hole row is disposed diametrically opposite the excitation aperture. In particular, the tone hole rows are located in two arms of a V-shaped portion of the instrument. Further, a palm rest is proposed that is attached to or near each of the arms so that the instrument can be supported in the palms which are pressed inwards towards each other to react against the two palm rests. This ensures that the fingers are not involved in support and all ten digits are available to operate holes or keys.
The palm rests allow for using all ten fingers for controlling keys even when playing concert flutes. Besides this, the further problems of known instruments and their key mechanisms are not solved.
GB 254,395 (J. W. McAvoy) relates to an improvement of woodwind instruments such as flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons or saxophones. The proposed instrument has an arrangement of bar levers or multiple levers that control a number of the independent pad levers and/or auxiliary levers, whereas these bar levers may be selectively out of action or in action. The bar levers are provided with extensions lying in the reach of the player's fingers. Specifically, a flute having 16 tone holes is described. The right hand fingers control pad levers and auxiliary levers, the left hand fingers control pad levers and auxiliary levers. Furthermore, three bar levers are provided. The bar levers lie over pad levers, so that when a bar lever is depressed by a finger piece extension said pad levers are all depressed, which allows for operating the adjacent auxiliary levers by the respective hand (controlling additional holes). A further bar lever on the other side of the tone holes is normally raised, it may be operated using extensions by the left thumb or the right index finger, respectively. Operating the bar lever opens the additional holes allowing for operating the auxiliary levers of the right hand (controlling the additional holes). This allows for controlling any number of pad levers and/or auxiliary levers at one time by one finger or thumb and for transposing without having to change the fingering. Furthermore, forked fingerings are avoided.
This design approaches some of the aforementioned problems. However, the fingers still need to move between different contacts (such as main levers and auxiliary levers) and the operation of bar levers is unfamiliar to woodwind players.